Authors: Are Your Mobile Ready?

I am teaching at the San Francisco Writers Conference today so I have a guest post for you from Nick Rojas.

So, are you mobile ready?

As the world wide web becomes more mobile, developing a content strategy for marketing efforts should match.

[clickToTweet tweet=”Over a billion people are using mobile data for internet-related activities” quote=”Over a billion people are using mobile data for internet-related activities”] including blogging, emailing and social media networking.

This trend towards mobile usage can be utilized in many different ways, but it’s important to understand how differently today’s consumers use their mobile devices compared to a desktop computer.

Understanding these dissimilarities can help authors to employ better campaigns and marketing strategies.

Marketing with mobile is a two-part street that involves both published content as well as advertising and promotions. Mobile users spend an average of one to three hours per day accessing the web, and how they engage and what they are viewing in this time offers a wealth of information for marketing on a level of convenience.

Mobile Marketing

[clickToTweet tweet=”Mobile usage affects marketing at the most basic level in buying” quote=”Mobile usage affects marketing at the most basic level in buying”], where more people than ever before are using their phones to perform these tasks.

The bulk of smartphone users are between the ages of 18 and 54. If you write YA and New Adult novels, your demographic likely spends little time accessing the web via a PC or iMac.

Even authors writing other genres will need to rethink their marketing in terms of their websites, blogs and newsletters and be certain that they are all mobile ready.

Today mobile phones are becoming replacements for items previously reserved for paper. [clickToTweet tweet=”Hardcover books have become ebooks, paperbacks are Kindle bound” quote=”Hardcover books have become ebooks, paperbacks are Kindle bound”], tickets purchased at a box office for concerts and movies are now available online.

As authors, we see this every day: Businesses offer scanned rebates, coupons sent on smartphones and e-clips for shopping, while others accept debit and gift cards scanned from a mobile device for in-store transactions.

How might you apply this to the business of selling books as a self-published author?

Presence

People who use mobile are often on the go and do not want to search in depth for the information they need, so that means making necessary information readily accessible, and deploying your own content optimized for mobile so people can easily locate and view it from their phones.

Ensuring that home and landing pages are optimized for mobile usage is a crucial step in digital marketing. Not only do the design and formatting have to be adjusted for smaller screen sizes, but menu options should be pared down to include only those most necessary to optimize the ease of access.

Nick Rojas is a business consultant and writer who lives in Los Angeles and Chicago. He has consulted small and medium-sized enterprises for over twenty years. He has contributed articles to Visual.ly, Entrepreneur, and TechCrunch. You can follow him on Twitter @NickARojas.